


Creep

by Vulnerable_Antihero



Category: Prometheus (2012)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-06
Updated: 2012-09-06
Packaged: 2017-11-13 17:12:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/505833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vulnerable_Antihero/pseuds/Vulnerable_Antihero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Your skin makes me cry,” he murmured to himself as he watched her release everything into the waste bowl. He’d said it as a sort of joke that only he would understand. He would never have her skin, nor would he ever be able to cry- he could let tears fall from his eyes, but it was triggered by an emotion he could not feel. However, if he could, he would wish for skin like hers to touch whenever he wanted, and he would wish it to the point of crying.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Creep

**Author's Note:**

> The story derived from Radiohead's "Creep", which I felt fit David's character perfectly. He's so complex in the most beautiful way.

David’s world remained tilted as his severed head lied helplessly on the ground staring at Weyland’s dead body. David seemed to lose what faith he had in his understanding of the world when the creator of human beings decided to destroy them. It had made sense at the time, but Weyland’s last words, “There’s nothing to learn,” spoke volumes and all he could do was watch his father’s life slip so easily away without closure, without love, without promise. If David could feel, he would probably cry at this moment, in the wake of realizing that everything was a lie, all time was wasted.

He had to keep his mind occupied. The loss of his father was too much for him to compute along with the disappointment of the world’s essential creator. There must be some relatively pleasant memory David contained within his head. He thought of _Lawrence of Arabia_ , but the thought was too connected with his father. He thought of learning, a task that came effortlessly to him, yet was one of the most enjoyable experiences he had faced. However, _learning_ was a source of the team’s troubles. If David had been less involved with the project and had allowed Dr. Shaw and Dr. Holloway to proceed with their exploration, perhaps they would not have encountered so much death and destruction. Or, perhaps they still would have, given that David only sped up the amount of time in which Dr. Shaw and Dr. Holloway made their discovery of their creators.

_Dr. Shaw_ \- a thought David enjoyed and disliked all at the same time, because the image of Dr. Shaw- though pleasant enough- was instantly destroyed by the image of Dr. Holloway. It was then that David realized how inappropriate he had been toward the man. He had misunderstood Dr. Holloway’s intentions and produced the man into an enemy, when in actuality the doctor was just doing his job with stress and humiliation tugging at his conscience. But Dr. Shaw was a different story.

Lying there, just a head on the ground, David saw Dr. Shaw, sitting over her pod, throwing up what she had in her system into a small waste bowl David had provided her with. He remembered placing his hand on her back for support and comfort, offering her the details of her body’s functions in a polite and calm voice that he had learned would be useful to people in their time of need. He wasn’t able to look her in the eye, a feature he had also learned was helpful, because she was turned away from him and it would be strange if he had tried to help her from the front. But even in her moment of sickness- when most others would find her unattractive- David thought she looked like an angel.

Weyland, David’s assumed father, told him stories of angels when he was of a younger model age. Weyland wasn’t sure he believed in them, but he said, “We can’t always believe in things in order to feel them there with us. If these creatures do exist, they live in the most abstract forms, some in humans, some in nature, others through particles in the air. We don’t have to believe in angels, David, because they’re always there and they don’t need our sympathy. I feel their presence during trifling moments in my life, and you will encounter them during yours, but you can make the decision to believe in them or not. And if you do choose to believe, treat them with the utmost respect. Take care of them, and don’t let them disappear without your knowledge. They’re special, David. Keep them close.”

David had made the mistake in asking his father if Meredith was his angel. He had previously researched angels the best he possibly could and noted that most of them were formed as beautiful women. Meredith, through his calculations, was determined as a beautiful woman. Surely, in his mind, she must be Weyland’s angel. But the old man scoffed in near disgust and said, “No, David. _You_ are my angel.”

The texture of Dr. Shaw’s skin was near perfect in David’s mind. It was soft, gentile, and moist to the touch. David could not feel, of course, but he made the calculations in his head and concluded that Dr. Shaw had some of the best skin a human could have. David almost envied it. His skin was not as soft, or gentile, or moist to the touch. His skin was gooey and stuck to him like damp clay.

“Your skin makes me cry,” he murmured to himself as he watched her release everything into the waste bowl. He’d said it as a sort of joke that only he would understand. He would never have her skin, nor would he ever be able to cry- he could let tears fall from his eyes, but it was triggered by an emotion he could not feel. However, if he could, he would wish for skin like hers to touch whenever he wanted, and he would wish it to the point of crying.

Later, he determined that it was not her skin that he most enjoyed, but Dr. Shaw herself that he would like to have around him anytime he wanted. He recalled the moment they encountered the storm and she had slipped away from sight as she ran out to protect her creator’s head. She had made an unintelligent call and Dr. Holloway then made the same when he went out after her. She was slipping away from David, and if she was his angel, he had to take care of her and keep her close. It was then that David decided to open the door closest to Dr. Shaw and Dr. Holloway’s position and travel with a secure rope to help them both to safety.

He could sense Dr. Shaw’s body was close to his and he watched her move with the rope, floating like a feather across the distance in whatever storm they were in. The dirt shimmered and chimed like it was particles of glass moving through the earth. _A beautiful world_ , David thought to himself as they moved toward the door, all the while watching Dr. Shaw’s body move with him. _We are in a beautiful world._

When they were inside, Dr. Holloway irrationally chose to yell at Dr. Shaw about the incident. Dr. Holloway was scared. She had almost disappeared from him in a mere second and if he hadn’t rushed out there to try to save her, she would have been lost forever. However, if David hadn’t rescued them, they both would have been lost including their valuable guest.

 

As David’s head lied there on the ship’s control panel, feeling the vibration of the vessel as it began for its departure, he realized that Dr. Holloway had not meant to harm Dr. Shaw or make her feel upset in that very moment. He had been terrified of losing her and could only express himself in the best way he knew how- to become irate and yell. David couldn’t help but conclude that Dr. Shaw must have been Dr. Holloway’s angel too. He couldn’t lose her. She was too special.

“I wish I was special,” David spoke suddenly, inaudible over the noise of the ship. David wasn’t even sure what ‘special’ meant or what it felt like to be ‘special’, but the way Weyland talked about angels and their ‘specialness’, David understood that it must be a great honour to be ‘special’. He glanced at his father’s face briefly to see if his soul remained in his body, but it hadn’t. It had left quite a while ago, and now there was no one left to tell him that he was ‘special’ or to even consider him as ‘special’.

 

As Dr. Holloway yelled at her and made her feel as if she had caused a great deal of harm, David watched her expression stay steady as if she knew Dr. Holloway was going to react in such a manner. She looked tired and shaken, yet proud that she had kept the head with her, and pleased that she had made it into the ship alive.

“Are you alright?” David decided to ask her, which eased the tension in the room and the pressure on her mind that Dr. Holloway had placed on her.

She looked up into his eyes and said, “I’m fine, David,” a hint of a relieved smile playing on her lips. David knew in that very moment that Dr. Shaw was, in fact, an angel and not a human being. He had to protect her, and the only person who had seemed to have caused a threat to her was Dr. Holloway, therefore he felt it necessary to terminate the man, even if his termination wasn’t completely intentional.

When Dr. Holloway’s body destroyed itself with the virus David had given him, David watched the absolute pain and anguish he suffered. He watched the grimace on his face, heard the screams emitting from his lungs, and saw the form of death enter his mind. By his calculations, Dr. Holloway was enduring one of the most painful deaths ever recorded, yet he could not care. Of course he couldn’t care, one could determine, because David is a robot and has the inability to feel anything. Perhaps that is correct, but David had some sort of feeling for Weyland, _Lawrence of Arabia_ , and now Dr. Shaw. Maybe it was not the textbook definition of a _feeling_ , but it must have been a feeling nonetheless. What he ‘felt’ toward Dr. Holloway was something dark and foul. He shouldn’t have felt it, but he did, and he didn’t mind that it was there. He wanted to have control over Dr. Holloway. He wanted to prove that he wasn’t just meant to “follow orders”. He was meant for much more than that.

Though the Alien DNA David dropped into Dr. Holloway’s drink was done out of experimentation for Weyland, he still sensed animosity creeping up inside of him, and he didn’t mind if the DNA killed Dr. Holloway. He didn’t mind at all.

It might have been because Dr. Holloway had things David did not have, and those things ultimately separated the two quite drastically in terms of who Dr. Shaw preferred. Dr. Holloway was able to love Dr. Shaw and treat her in ways that only humans could treat one another. His body was perfect- perfect condition in health and strength. David’s body was just machine beneath skin. He couldn’t change his physique, only his creators could do that. And they had decided to make him a skinny man with hardly any muscle.

Dr. Holloway had a soul and David did not. Weyland always said that to people when introducing David. He listed his wonderful qualities and attributes, and then stated the negatives, the last one being that he did not possess a soul. David always frowned when his father said this, and people figured it was a reaction that David had done in spite of his human colleagues, but David did not have to react in such a way. He _wanted_ to. If he could feel, he would detest the fact that he didn’t have a soul. He wished that he could hate and feared that he’d never be able to, for to love, one must hate and he could do neither.

 

The ship had taken off without Dr. Shaw, which was either an advantage or a disadvantage for her. At the time, David couldn’t decipher which. He knew she had left because he could hear her, could hear her every movement, her every breath. He knew where she was, but she could not care less that he was still aboard the creator’s ship, about to destroy all of mankind. Dr. Shaw did not care about David at all, and he truly wanted her to.

He could see her running out of the ship, could hear her running down the hall, escaping to safe ground above somewhere. Good. She’s going to be okay. David wasn’t sure how she would survive without a world to come home to, but he knew she would figure out some way to live. She kept running; her feet never seemed to stop. The angel was the only one worthy enough of leaving the ship. She was the only one who would be most prominent in the end.

And then, her feet stopped.

He could hear her calling out to Captain Janek, explaining their current dilemma. The angel did not want her earth destroyed, did not want her home abolished.

“There won’t be a home to go back to,” she cried and David suddenly wished he could get out of the ship and help in some way. He was made to help others do what they were not programmed to do. This was his duty and he failed. He couldn’t possibly leave; his head was detached from his body.

Dr. Shaw was alone and afraid, unsure of what she could do. She had placed trust in the only companion she had left- Janek- and he had decided to place his trust in her. Dr. Shaw was much smarter than she had originally appeared. _Of course_ , David thought as she proposed the only plan possible for the salvation of Earth. Janek would have to crash the ship and it became clear that this could be David’s last moments of functionality.

The angel would be gone from him, though only in presence. He could still hear her and considered the perfect death was being able to have the one you care most for by your side. Not that David really understood any of that, but there was some sort of comfort he experienced in hearing her breathing as he prepared for his own system failure.

In the moments before the Prometheus crashed into the Engineer’s ship, he disappeared into a vision he could create for himself. He had seen footage of sexual intercourse between a male and a female, and he could easily place Dr. Shaw and himself in a similar scenario- doing something they could never do otherwise outside of David’s imagination. He could not understand the sensation one felt when engaging in such an act, but he could initiate the replication of such a feeling, though he would never experience it himself.

“I don’t belong here,” he said to himself.

The ships crashed in a much different way than David had anticipated. The Engineer’s ship could no longer run, but he was untouched, unharmed by the explosion. It had not affected the room at all, and soon they were sent back to the ground in a chaotic fashion. David’s systems had not failed after all and he could still hear Dr. Shaw’s breathing. She had to be alive; he couldn’t detect any source of pain in her voice. He heard her oxygen level fail her and thought that he should probably say something to her, but he heard her move. She moved slowly, but she had a goal in mind.

There could be hope for her yet, but he had watched her creator escape his ship and head toward hers. He had to say something. He had to warn her.

“Elizabeth,” he said. There was no need to refer to her as ‘Dr. Shaw’ any longer. Their professional level had gone out of the window a long time ago and the only thing either of them needed at this point was intimacy, friendship. He told her that her creator was coming for her and he listened to her scream, “Die,” as her baby attacked the Engineer. Elizabeth was an incredible individual, one he had misjudged. This was the reason he couldn’t consider her human. She was too _special_.

As she sobbed and sobbed and sobbed, David realized that there was a chance he could end her suffering. The second he mentioned there being another ship, he knew that Elizabeth was now willing to accept his help and he would be back on duty, serving her as a helper and a guide, as a friend and a companion.

Seeing her again as she entered the ship was a sight greater than _Lawrence of Arabia_ , greater than the company of his father. His angel had come back to him in his time of need and she would never leave him. They benefited off of one another, a perfect match, though odd as it seemed. As she placed his head gently in her bag, he saw the bright opportunity for an adventure.

He belonged.


End file.
